Chaotic liquid mixer design and application

Abstract

It has been theoretically considered that chaotic vibration provides the best possibility of achieving thorough and efficient mixing of fluids. This project aims at seeking for a practical chaotic perturbation approach to mix liquids more efficiently. We mainly consider the mixing process in one of the most widely utilized mixing devices, the stirred tank. Based on the stirred tank, we design and implement a motor-driven liquid mixing device model, which is capable of working in different modes driven by various control signals. By trying different signals to drive the motor, such as DC signal, sine wave signal or sampled chaotic signal, we produce the perturbations of the liquids under mixing in constant, periodic or chaotic manners respectively. Analysis on the different outcomes from the different mixing conditions gives us the ideas on how to mix in a more efficient way as well as further understandings in chaotic liquid mixing. We could draw a preliminary conclusion from the experiments that the perturbation pattern driven by chaotic control signal achieves the best efficacy in liquid mixing, among those of the several control signals tested.